The “sky will not fall in” if next year’s Sats do not take place because of the coronavirus, a school leaders’ union boss has said.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, said that running the tests as normal would not be a credible way of assessing pupils’ attainment or progress, given the ongoing disruption that Year 6 pupils are facing because of Covid-19.

The NAHT has already called for performance tables based on key stage 2 Sats results to be frozen for another year.

And speaking to Tes, Mr Whiteman suggested that it would be wrong for the Sats to be run as normal this academic year.

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He said: “We didn’t use Sats this year and the sky didn’t fall in, so if we don’t use Sats in the normal way next year I don’t think the sky is going to fall in at all. 

“We have proved we can rely on teacher assessment; it is a credible way to understand where children are.

Will Sats take place next year?

“The assessment of children will need to be different because of the impact of five months of being out of school, the impact of the stress and the pressure that has gone on around children, so [Sats] are not really a credible way to assess attainment or progress right now - so let’s remove that worry.

“Let us remove the unintended and perverse incentives of that system for this year and truly get back to the human element of teaching.”

Two months ago, the Department for Education said that Sats tests will go ahead as planned next year, despite calls for them to be cancelled.

And other statutory primary assessments, including the phonics check and multiplication tables check, will also take place in 2020-21, according to Department for Education guidance, published in July.

The NAHT has warned that “the reintroduction of all statutory tests could be to the detriment of children’s wellbeing and progress across the curriculum, particularly if there are to be no adaptations to those assessments, as 2020-21 will not be a normal year for schools or pupils”. 

Mr Whiteman warned today that there were already signs of the disruption Covid-19 will continue to cause for schools over the academic year.

He said: “We are pushing forward with a determination and an assumption that next year’s exam and testing series will happen as it did in 2019.

“Although that is something that everyone wants to be the case, we are seeing already the disruption that is happening in the first couple of weeks and the virus is beginning to spike a second time, so nobody can really tell where the disruption will be and how bad it will be wherever it occurs. We need to be making contingency plans for that now and look at different ways of assessing students’ academic ability right now.”